Читать книгу Orphan of Islam - Alexander Khan - Страница 7

1988. HAQQANIA MADRASSA, NORTH-WEST PAKISTAN

The mullah bends down, his long grey-black beard brushing against my feet as he unlocks the leg brace. I’ve been standing rigid in it for at least three hours, unable to sit, kneel or even squat for fear of snapping my ankles. I could cry with relief, but I’m too frightened to cry. At least not yet.

He points to the blackboard in front of me with his bamboo stick, the one he uses to whack us all with when we can’t pronounce something from the Holy Book. My Arabic is rubbish; I’m very used to that stick.

‘Read it,’ he commands, glaring at me with dark eyes.

All the lights have gone out across the madrassa and the only illumination in the room is a lantern with a tiny wick. I read the chalked scripture slowly, trying to pronounce all the words right:

‘La ilaha illallah Muhammad rasul Allah’ (‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.’)

Whack! The stick comes across my shoulders. Wrong again. Hearing Arabic spoken is one thing, trying to read it quite another, and my northern English accent easily wins out. The mullah glares at me with undisguised contempt.

‘Go back to your room,’ he says. ‘We’ll see each other in here again tomorrow. You’re a disgrace to Islam.’

I stumble through the darkness to the dormitory and feel my way across the room to my blanket. Most of the boys are sleeping. I lie down and start to cry, as quietly as I can. The question goes through my mind, the same question that nags me night and day: how the hell have I ended up here? An ordinary lad from Lancashire stuck in some kind of weird medieval fairy story, but with no sign of a happy ending …

Back home, my mates are secretly listening to Bros or Guns n’ Roses in their bedrooms, hoping their dads won’t catch them and send them for an extra session of prayer at the mosque. That is as bad as life gets for them; why have I been singled out for such harsh punishment so far from home? What have I done to deserve this?